Looking ahead – Projection of 2009

We are currently finalizing the budget for 2009, which is looking very promising.

This will be communicated in the next Investor Newsletter after the Board has approved this later this month. We are taking into consideration the difficult business environment looming for 2009, but our value proposition is to help big brands saving money by implementing global marketing campaigns “the new way” through our proven SaaS software; Brand master attached with our professional services on smart online and offline ad templates creation. We have seen examples of companies cutting 70 % of their ongoing software
projects, but increasing their effort on implementing our Brand master Software to be more cost efficient on a day to day basis. The global rollout of Brand master for the Daimler Group is a great reference and we have invested in more senior software sales staff in the UK to capture the opportunity we foresee in 2009.
Overall, we have 50 major customers and over 15.000 marketing executives worldwide using the system.

Our service department on the creative side has very strong relationships towards Universal, Paramount, EA, and many others. The latest additions in our portfolio are Sony Play station, Harrods and Vodafone.

Vertical Group ASA has already almost secured the entire Q1 2009 budget cash flow for approximately NOK 20 Mill. We are targeting towards 2009 an overall 30 % growth versus 2008 levels, with a 20 % operating profit.
We are currently in discussions with industrial players as well as our AIM brokers with the objective to seek exit opportunities for Vertical Group shareholders within 2009.

Hard work pays off

Vertical Group ASA has had a very eventful year in 2008.
We decided to stop our planned IPO towards Oslo Access in January, due to the current market conditions and our future market predictions.
In retrospect, we believe it was the right decision.
We managed to complete the 100% purchase of the Norwegian software company T4M, which was a key piece in our overall strategy.
In April, we also raised additional capital to remove all debts occurring from the previous IPO process.
We have now a complete Due Diligence legal and financial trail, provided by Selmer and PwC for all entities of Vertical Group ASA.
We also adopted all historic accounts for the group towards IFRS and set up processes in order to enable us to continue under the same standard with monthly reporting.

Vertical Group ASA has a signed mandate letter with UK broker HB Corporate for a potential AIM listing. This means that
we can fast track for IPO, when the timing is right. We have done appropriate management and employee
replacements throughout our entities during 2008. The ambition of Vertical Group was, for the year 2008, to have integrated all the companies with cost efficient internal processes, drive synergies, have motivated staff, satisfied customers, 100 % cost control and positive cash flow on monthly basis. We are happy to say that we now have achieved all these goals.

The second half of this Year will be profitable within the entire Vertical Group, with Q4 confirming the increasing performance trend.
Please find below a graph showing the development of the Group throughout 2008.

Quarterly Results Vertical Group 2008

NewMediaMaze designs new Prime Minister’s Office offical website

NewMediaMaze announces the launch of the new official site of the Prime Minister’s Office, Number 10 Downing Street website, which can be found at number10.gov.uk.

The new site is a complete departure from the previous website, being much less text heavy and with a stronger focus on news from Number 10. With a brief to simplify the design and the ease with which the site can be updated, the decision was made to launch the new site using WordPress as a publishing platform. In addition to its ease of use and customisation, WordPress will also ensure the Number 10 site continues to feature prominently and immediately in search engines.

New Media Maze’s expertise of working with WordPress includes building the Arena Magazine web site on the same platform in recent years. New Media Maze handled the design, build, usability and porting of all data from the old to the new web site. Security and accessibility were also key considerations during the build.

Whilst number10.gov.uk retains much of its popular educational and historical content from the previous site such as ‘Prime Minister’s In History’ and ‘History of Number 10’, the new site employs a fresher design and simpler layout with the main navigation categories being News, Communicate, Meet the PM, History and Tour and Number 10 TV. The homepage features news from Number 10 and includes an initial video greeting from the Prime Minister.

As well as the latest news, Number10.gov.uk has a key emphasis on video and image content, this can be seen on both the ‘Top Story’ box on the homepage, which can be used to house either a video or an image, and through the new video channel, ‘Number 10 TV’. The site also pulls on Number 10’s feeds from Flickr, YouTube and Twitter.

Using the conventional reverse chronological structure of a blog, the site provides users with an easy search platform to find recently published content along with the freedom to search specific dates using the calendar search tool, and topic-specific content using the tags added to the posts.

New Media Maze’s Adam Phillips, who managed the project along with Jimmy Leach, Digital Director of Freuds at the time, adds “The new site provides a simple and effective means of updating and browsing the latest news from Downing Street. This has been an exciting, landmark project to work on. We’re really proud of the outcome and excited to see how users receive the new site”.

NewMediaMaze wins multiple awards for interactive site

NMM is proud to announce winning three further awards for our work. In May we launched Carrie’s MacBook interactive content site for the Sex and the City movie on behalf of New Line Cinema in the US. Not only has this done phenomenally well in terms of visitors and user interaction, it has also won us a few awards including e-creative’s Website of the Day , Design Licks Site of the Day and 1^st Runner Up in the IAB Creative Showcase for May 2008. It was also crowned New Media Age’s Campaign of the Month which is a testament to the great work at NMM.

FirstPartner asked to partner with industry body Intellect

FirstPartner has been asked by the UK industry representation body Intellect to partner with them in the preparation of a series of Market Maps to brief members, government and regulatory bodies on a range of current industry topics.

Intellect recognised the FirstPartner Market Map methodology as providing the capability they required to quickly provide insight into market structures, dynamics and trends, and gain valuable initial input to a strategy definition process. In addition, the graphical presentation format enabled communication of information with interested individuals not directly engaged with an industry topic.

Intellect has over 9,000 members in the UK, ranging from blue chip multi-nationals through to early stage technology enterprises. Intellect’s role is to provide a single powerful voice for the information technology, telecommunications and electronics industries in the UK. The key roles for Intellect are influencing policy; improving markets and supply chains; and helping members to grow their business.

Daimler selects BrandMaster as global solution

10/06/08  After working closely with various parts of the Daimler cooperation over the last 6 years, the Marketing Resource Management system BrandMaster was approved as the Mercedes-Benz Cars’  standard MRM system. The system is currently in use in 7 larger markets, and the objective is a worldwide roll-out over the next few years. Daimler sells its products in nearly all the countries of the world and has production facilities on five continents. Mercedes-Benz is the world?s 10th most valued brand, with a brand value exceeding NOK 117 billions. By introducing BrandMaster as the standardised strategic marketing and information tool, Mercedes-Benz foresee a consistent and brand-adequate communication message to the customer at the point of sale and efficiency in all processes related to marketing on all sales and organizational levels.

Vertical Group announces acquisition of T4M

07/05/08   Vertical Group today has completed the acquisition of T4M AS, a leading player in the Marketing Resource Management MRM software sector. The acquisition brings to the group a strong business headquartered in Oslo which has an impressive customer base including DnBNOR, Daimler, VW Group, Helly Hansen and many more. The company has over 85 live customer deployments and over 15,000 users of its technologies.   With the acquisition Vertical Group will now expand the capabilities of BrandMaster to fully address the digital media growth markets as well as expanding the business within Europe and Internationally.
Kurt Lyall CEO of Vertical Group said today, “T4M AS provides a key pillar for Vertical Group and provides us a clear roadmap from which to acquire further European marketing software companies and expand our group. We have been greatly impressed by the quality of BrandMaster solution and the strength of the Management team behind the company”.

Tagsearch Technologies joins rank of top 100 EContent list

16/11/2007 Tagsearch Technologies, a leader in Social Bookmark Exchanges, has been named among the 100 leaders in the digital content industry by EContentmagazine. Judges of the EContent 100 List recognized Tagsearch Technologies for its innovative use of bookmarking and knowledge management in the workplace. The award is shared with notable companies such as Digg, LinkedIn, Google, and IBM. Read more.